First published 20 January 2020. The system had been minting a dollar token since December 2017. Expanded in October 2026 so MKR is not described as Dai, and so the Sky conversion is not described as something that happened to every balance. Maker is a set of Ethereum contracts. Rune Christensen is the person most associated with it. You lock collateral in a vault and the contracts mint Dai, a token aimed at a dollar. You owe that Dai back, plus a fee, before the collateral comes out. What is Dai (DAI)? is the dollar token. MKR is the other token. It votes on which collateral is allowed, on the fee, and on how much debt the system may create. Ethereum without the jargon is the ledger. ETH pays the fee. MKR does not.
The opening supply was 1 million MKR. That is not a cap. The 2017 design took the stability fee in MKR and burned it. The later system takes the fee in Dai, and surplus can be used to buy MKR and burn it. A burn is coins destroyed. It is not a dividend. If auctions do not cover the debt, the system can mint MKR and sell it. Holders are diluted. That is the point of the token: the people who vote also absorb a shortfall. In March 2020 some vaults were liquidated for nothing, because the auction had no bid. Black Thursday was weather with a liquidation engine. is that week, written as news. This page will not walk through a vault or an auction.
On 18 September 2024 the organisation rebranded as Sky. One MKR converts to 24,000 SKY. What is Sky (SKY)? is that token. Conversion is a transaction you sign. MKR you did not convert still exists. A price times 1 million counts coins that may have been burned or converted, and it misses any MKR minted into a shortfall. A small SKY price next to an MKR price is the split. It is not a discount. Nothing here is an instruction to open a vault, to convert, or to buy MKR.
